What's happened to au pair world?

[twelfstripe]

I'm trying to find an au pair again and surprisingly I'm not having much luck with au pair world. So far I have only interviewed one au pair after a few weeks. Previously I have been inundated with good candidates.

What are others experiences? Where else do you find au pairs?

I seem to remember a similar post at the same sort of time last year - maybe its just a bad time to recruit? Lots of au pairs have started new jobs in September maybe.

I tried great au pair last time too and would not recommend. Expensive and I was only ever contacted by women looking for nanny jobs who wanted to be sponsored for a VISA.

You could try your local au pair Facebook page. But I would just check that what you're offering is still attractive compared to other host families. I usually view some other host family adverts just to check my package if still good.

I'm pretty sure we are offering a good deal, you are probably right about the wrong time of the year. I've found a good candidate now, so fingers crossed it works out.

I know there are families out there who lie on APW and their deal appears amazing and when the AP arrives they gradually move to the truth. I think if you are honest your deal appears poor in comparison.
But what I know is that my APs stay the full time others move quickly when everything changes.
Time year has little to do with it. It used to take me a week to find someone, last time it took the full 6 weeks membership.

How do families lie lone ? I'm genuinely interested and perplexed.

I think our profile is a good representation of the job, and I talk about more of the detail with candidates.

They play down the total of number of hours, play done the amount of cleaning, they don't explain that the AP will need to go to their room at 7pm every night, they don't explain that if the AP comes home after midnight they will find the door bolted. Had all of this happen to friends of my APs.
Most common is that there is a lit more cleaning sometimes as much as 5hours a day, also they say less than 25 hours in truth the job is 40hrs.

Wow, those sound terrible.

Tbh I didn't include hours or pay in the advert, but discussed that with candidates so they could pull out before the interview if they aren't interested.

We will be offering £100 for aprox 25 h in London which I think is a reasonable deal.